meme got me curious... in Lovecraftian horror, the beings aren't really aliens, but just entities that we simply can't fathom, right? They aren't little green men from Mars, more like extradimensional beings that lurk in the farthest reaches of space, sort of God-like beings?

honestly, it wasn't bad at all. the poison swamp is easily rolled through. the only thing I died to was the brain dudes and that's because I didn't know 1) they Frenzied you and you can't run away from it and 2) high Insight screws your Frenzy resist. I struggled far more with the Forbidden Woods than this place. boss was a pushover for the most part as well. all I did was bait her into using the glow attack then run in and dashing power attack her to the face. much more tricky in the 2nd phase, but still doable.

that said, it's probably more challenging at a lower level, but like Yahar'gul, I wouldn't do it early on in the game unless I was purposely trying to make the game more difficult

kob wrote:what do you feel is the difference with the runback in DeS and the other titles? admittedly i haven't beaten DeS, but i did the exact same thing in that game as i've done in the other 3.

DeS is by far the least generous with where it respawns you and the shortcuts you unlock compared to the rest of the series—you frequently have to barge through a decent chunk of the level to get back to the boss, so part of succeeding was mastering the route back and learning what you can run past and what it's safest to just engage. bloodborne gives you either a lantern or a shortcut that 9 times out of 10 renders the run back utterly risk free. boss runs, like vial farming, are nothing but busywork in this game. if i'm not learning or being pushed to master anything, why am i not just respawning at the boss gate?

i'm not by any means complaining that the game is too nice about shortcuts, i just think if the boss run isn't actually part of the challenge of taking on a boss, its presence at all is pretty suspect.

Gordon Frohman wrote:Also Ranaosm, the whole

AYY LMAO ALIENS

meme got me curious... in Lovecraftian horror, the beings aren't really aliens, but just entities that we simply can't fathom, right? They aren't little green men from Mars, more like extradimensional beings that lurk in the farthest reaches of space, sort of God-like beings?

well, what do you mean 'not really aliens'? aliens can't be unfathomable to a human mind?

so part of the point of lovecraft's mythos is that lines are blurred and the protagonists never know enough to give you a clear perspective on any of it. lovecraft's work itself is vague and contradictory by design. there are some entities that are unambiguously aliens, like the mi-go, who are spacefaring fungus creatures from yuggoth (pluto), or the elder things. it's important to understand that lovecraft was highly cynical of the traditional concept of gods, and it's strongly implied that what was a 'god' to one creature was just a being beyond their capacity to comprehend, which itself sat somewhere below the top of the cosmic food chain. there are implied entities in the mythos that are to cthulhu what cthulhu is to humanity.

so basically yes and no and both. to say they are not aliens is wrong, but to say that's all they are feels incomplete. like i said bloodborne's depiction is absolutely spot on. it has a whole menagerie of entities of wildly different origins and influence:

the parasitic snake creatures of the woods, the cosmic fungi, rom, the amygdalas, etc.

that suggests an entire thriving cosmos governed by rules and motives beyond human comprehension. the further you get up the food chain the less clarity there is, the less satisfying an answer 'alien' becomes, and the easier it gets to compare them to gods.

oh okay yeah i noticed that as well. i managed to do it without too much of a hassle, but it got tricky a few times. i've also only done like half the game so that might change with more nightmarish levels like the swamp.

i think i'm getting pretty close to the end (well, i could probably end it right now given that most of the areas and bosses in this game are optional) and i gotta echo your comment about consistency ransom. every area and boss has been great, which is a huge contrast to DaS 1 & 2 where the 2nd half of the game is much weaker.

the only thing I really struggled with were her two charge attacks. the land one it seems like the only way to dodge is to be really far out of range or side step 2 times minimum in one direction as soon as she begins telegraphing. if you're even a hair late there's a good chance you're gonna get chunked. the aerial one I didn't figure out because she didn't do it too often. pretty frustrating, but manageable. my tactic was to run in and bait attacks until I got one where she left her head vulnerable. from there, a dashing power attack would stagger her, which I'd then follow up with one or two swings. this would cause her to get stunned again, so I'd rinse and repeat and put her in a stunlock until she's finally able to break out of it. however, on my kill attempt, I skipped the dancing back and forth bullshit and immediately went for the head upon entering the fog gate and just went apeshit. she spent probably 60% of the fight stunned.

but yeah really, really fun fight. not to mention her aesthetic was cool as hell.

yeah i had no trouble with her either, just busted out some bolt paper and obliterated her on my second try. the charge is definitely rough but like kob i had her stunlocked for practically half the fight

and yeah

i adored ebrietas' design. the game is very classy about downplaying the played-out tentacle-monster parts of lovecraft, and that boss managed to be an homage to cthulhu without just being a big ol' octopus-face. the wings, specifically, and its pose in the shaft of light when you first enter the boss room. very evocative. i loved that until she moves she's visually baffling - her design is so alien you don't know what part of her you're looking at.

Shit, I have to skip like every spoiler cuz y'all are so much further along than me.

I really agree with the highs and lows description of the games, along with the highs being the best in the series.

DeS is still the most balanced production of the series in my opinion, and there are some really dumb things I don't like about Bloodborne, but fuck is it rad when it's doing things right. Even when I'm salty, I really don't want to stop playing. There's too much cool stuff to see.

The way this game does lore is incredible, and it fits so well with the Lovecraft theme. The other games claim to tell story strictly through lore and item description and environments, but this is the first one that *really* nails it. Every little piece of the world tells a small story.

I just found

the source of the Hunter's dream

and it's just crazy how this game really does have an answer for most things if you look for it and think carefully. There's lots of secrets in this game, and, fitting with the theme, they often introduce as many questions as they answer.

The horror theme works so well, and there are genuinely frightening moments in this game, particularly once you start wracking up insight and the night progresses. That fucking thing on the side of the church that's just been there the whole time and you have no idea? Jesus. And everyone inside thinks they're safe.

I love that about this setting too. The notion that knowledge isn't just not helpful, but actively *damaging* to you is such a scary concept. It's not just possessing the knowledge of the ancients drives you mad and therefore shouldn't be known, it's that knowing it literally changes the world *for the worse*. Like inverted science, discovering the truth shackles you into a cursed world that you would be safe from if you just didn't know about it.

All that being said, as much as I love this game, I kind of agree with Ransom. I'm burnt out on this format. Bloodborne didn't shake it up enough, it still feels very much like a souls game. And I think games like dragon's dogma prove that loose interpretations of these kinds of mechanics allow for the freedom to make more interesting kinds of games.

I would love to see From make a more puzzle focused, exploration/survival horror type game next with these kinds of mechanics, maybe in a more modern setting too.

For me, I'm just kinda burnt out on the core mechanics. The slow movement, the limited mobility options, the lack of NPC's, the punishing deaths and healings, abusing invincibility frames in rolls, money/exp duality, bonfires, excessive stamina restrictions, etc.

It just kinda feels like this "genre" is too caught up in the specific implementation of its mechanics as initiated by Demon's Souls, and not why those mechanics were interesting and for what reason they were implemented.

After 4 games plus Lords of the Fallen, I'd like to see something a little more radically different. Bloodborne tried and succeeded but, if you had a shield, took away rally, and made visceral attacks harder to do, you're basically just playing Dark Souls with the wood grain ring on. It's a welcome change but, the core of the game is still basically the same.

Although, to answer your question, yes, that part of things is also stupid, and one of many examples of a relic from DeS that's been carried over for tradition's sake.

An example of how Bloodborne could have really broken the formula? Off the top of my head? Remove blood vials, healing *only* occurs during rally. But the decay from when health is lost to when it is gone is about 20x slower. And completely lost health can only be recovered with visceral attacks.

Micolash - not sure if this dude was bugged for me or not, but his phase 2 he literally just ran through the mirrors over and over. got him on my first try, but god damn it took me 20 minutes and i was confused as hell

Mergo's Wet Nurse - the design was incredible. up there with Ebrietas for "coolest motherfucker in a Souls game". pretty easy, but holy shit she was terrifying. one try as well

Gehrman - uguhndfiohktmlr. first Logarius then this asshole. i dunno what it is about these 2 bosses, but they crushed me for a long time. must have died close to 20 times to this dude. the scythe phase was problematic for me. great fight though.

anyway final thoughts and shit

for me, Bloodborne changed just enough to keep the 'franchise' interesting. the aggressive, faster paced combat that is accentuated by the health recovery system made gameplay feel similar, but play differently. the previous games were all about staying defensive, getting a swing or two in and hiding behind your shield. obviously if your skill outmatched the game you could run in gung-ho naked and no HP to abuse the Red Tearstone Ring, but the majority of players, including myself, used a shield for protection. since you can't do that in Bloodborne, playing passively is a sub optimal strategy. I've seen a lot of new players struggle because they want to backpedal until the boss is on cooldown thanks to a lack of defensive tools. it can work, but it's slow, tedious and sometimes risky. you're better off weaving in and out, dodging left and right and mixing attacks in between. the combat feels undoubtedly like a souls game, but it's so much more exciting and that's enough to keep things fresh for me.

as for the highs and lows I agree DeS is probably the most balanced of them all. this would probably be different if Dark Souls' 2nd act was as good as the first, but in my admittedly half experience of DeS, it's the most balanced. however, because Bloodborne blows the previous games out of the water in so many respects, it's probably my favorite of the series. the setting, the enemy designs, the mechanics (after DS2's abysmal attack tracking especially), the atmosphere, the lore, the armor and weapon design. all top notch.

some gripes:

-vial/bullets system: it's just dumb. you can easily farm up about 100 of them by doing a few Lecture Hall runs and spending your souls on them, but as mentioned, the constant threat of having to stop what i'm doing and go farm is irritating as hell. it's a bad cross between DeS and DaS' health systems.

-technical issues: the framerate wasn't all that bad, but occasionally it went to shit. but the loading times... unacceptable.

-learning curve: this game is way too hard on new players. that big bonfire in the street was a god damn nightmare to get through when you're just starting out and then for you to fight two lycans shortly after? I felt like it was a bit much starting out. felt like they could've eased you into it more.

-lack of direction: was it just me or did Bloodborne really lack direction in where to go? in the previous games you could figure out where to go by NPC text, but with the lack of NPCs in this game I never knew where to go half the time. I had to consult with Gordon and look up on the wiki where shit was. I guess maybe that's intentional since a lot of the game is optional, but I found the lack of direction tedious. maybe I just missed it.

-lack of weapons/armor: it didn't hamper my enjoyment too much of the game, but the severe lack of weapons and armor compared to the other games is disappointing. i would have liked to see more weapons mostly. i spent half the game using the Saw Cleaver then the other half with Ludwig's Blade.

overall i really enjoyed it. it was frustrating as fuck at times, but i still had a lot of fun. for me it's the best in the series.

yeah, the game does have issues with feeling directionless. there's no indication which bosses are optional, so i often found myself finally emerging victorious only to find myself at a dead end. sometimes without even having received anything meaningful for beating the boss. i mean, now what? strange use of world space.

Gordon Frohman wrote:When you guys say you're burnt out on the Souls formula, are you strictly speaking of meet boss > die > run back to fog gate > repeat?

for me i think it's mostly this. i still love the experience of exploring new areas and the act of tackling bosses, especially when they're this varied and well designed, but there are elements of the formula that are just bogging things down. the death cycle in general has started to feel less like an interesting challenge and more like needlessly time-consuming design.

the thing is that formula made the most sense in demon's souls, which was of course all about careful, intelligent progression. so when you fucked up and bit off more than you could chew, or whatever, it made sense when the game was like: that one's on you. be more careful next time.

except that has very little to do with the flow of this game, which is all flurry and forward motion. i'm coming around to it maybe being my favourite yet but the worst parts of it are the things it didn't dare to change about series convention.

Saladin wrote:The horror theme works so well, and there are genuinely frightening moments in this game, particularly once you start wracking up insight and the night progresses. That fucking thing on the side of the church that's just been there the whole time and you have no idea? Jesus. And everyone inside thinks they're safe.

yesss. it's masterfully disempowering, even for a from game. not only is the game ruthless, progression itself erodes your confidence even when you're succeeding. my favourite moment like this was in (major spoilers for the area just after byrgenwerth)

the unseen village after the paleblood moon rises. holy shit. like, it's a pretty frustrating area and i was possibly underleveled, so i ended up just running through most of it, but that actually resulted in an awesome apocalyptic survival-horror experience which makes me suspect they meant it that way. i'm tumbling down corridors and alleyways, not quite knowing where i'm going as horrific abominations lurch and grasp at me from every direction, bathed in the light of that blood moon. those moaning, indescribable intertwined corpses slouch absurdly after me in their wagons, horned dogs snap at my heels, malformed gunmen snipe at me from the balconies. bells are ringing. i stagger past a seared, praying body at the centre of a howling, glowing crater.

it's the overwhelming chaos of an actual nightmare. fucking hellish moodbuilding, and one of the moments in this game that really set it apart from the rest of the series for me.

i wonder if this series starts becoming a yearly installment (if it hasn't already) whether i will start getting burned out. i would think that if the sequels change up enough like this game i wouldn't get burned out, but it's hard to say. the series is just fundamentally sound. like you ransom i enjoy exploring all the areas and tackling bosses. this series scratches that RPG itch without feeling like the hundreds of other games in the genre. when i play other RPGs i'm just like, "yeah this is an RPG and i'm doin' RPG things", but with this series it feels a lot more natural. you aren't being bothered all the time by game-y mechanics - you're just left to go explore this utterly intimidating world. i'm not sure if i could get sick of that as long the quality standard is met.

while i'm pretty soured on the B-team at From Soft, I still eagerly await what the inevitable Dark Souls 3 brings. I like to think they'll have learned from the mistakes of the second and put out a great game, but at the same time i do wonder if this is just a series that only Miyazaki gets. with how Lords of the Fallen and DS2 went, there might be truth to that.

Did people really hate LotF that much? I loved it and I'm on Dark Souls 2: SotFS and it's incredible, better in many aspects than the default game.

As for yearly installment of BB, I'd rather they take their time. Because as far as the flaws go, to me, there aren't that many - the glaring ones being the loading times and occasional framerate problem, but everything else was so solid.